From a Christmas Pudding to a Christmas Cracker - Weight Loss Motivation

^^^My youngest is now 4.5 (the half is very important) and she knows all the strings to pull, asking me why I prefer work to spending time with her. I know she is laying it on as I see her almost every morning and evening and full time at the weekends but my god does it cut deep.

I am penciling a walk before bed tonight, small goals.

I think I made the biggest pig of myself this Christmas, its a record. I wasn't in shape at all pre Christmas and then had two weeks off pigging out, think full pork breakfast half the days, 10-15 Quality street, take aways, loads of sambos, and pints to beat the band.

I was to afraid to weigh myself yesterday as I think it will be the heaviest I have been in four years. Add to that this morning getting ready for work I put on loose clothes and they are bet on to me.

I started yesterday with a jog, and did 45 mins in the gym this morning. Psyching myself up for a weigh in.

I did two BodySlims programmes last year and finished 3 stone lighter than I started. However in the past two weeks I'd say I've easily put on 10lbs (too terrified to look at the scales) as I ate and drank all round me, think biscuits for breakfast - she says as she's sipping a G&T midweek!! - my new size 10 jeans are feeling a bit too snug. Not back to work until Monday but I'll try to kick it into gear then. I'd a brunch with friends today, my brother's 50th party next Saturday, a meal with the women of the family in 2 weeks, a night away the following week and have to meet friends for a dinner in there too - doesn't make it easy!! Need to hit the gym too, walking the dog isn't enough.

@Jude13 meet your brother. I'm also at my heaviest since I got back in shape 7/8 years ago and have decided like yourself for pure health reasons I can't keep doing this and need to act accordingly. All the men in my fathers family have had heart problems and the vast majority died of heart attack and many at my age or younger, I don't want my children to lose their dad to an avoidable situation so have decided to stop being a selfish old git and to start taking care o myself.

I've a few more years under the belt than you so you've plenty of time to set things straight and I've no doubt that you will.

Like yourself I've too many old injuries now to go hell for leather running or in the gym so will need to hit the diet side of things moreso his time and get as much walking in as I can.

Here's to day 1!!

Planning on getting a 5-6k walk in this evening after I get home from work.

Just need to avoid the temptation of the Christmas treats people have brought in to the office now... avoiding at home is hard enough but to have the treats around me in the office too requires significant willpower!!

Love a walk alright. Is zone minutes when you are exerting yourself? That day I ran for 40 mins and I really felt the extra 10kg so Id say my heart was ready to pop.

Yesterday wasnt as good.

Today I will be lucky to get to 6k. I went to the gym this am and did half an hour they had a ice bath which was rough. I used to to them a lot years ago and have done them ad hoc in the past year.

Spent my first weekend in a while dry, it was tough as I had been asked out to play golf with some serious boozers. I meet my wife after the golf and she had a glass of wine (she had about 1 bottle of wine the whole of 2023), it was surreal.

Got loads of walking in over the weekend, I don't believe in Dry January as neither myself or the Mrs are big drinkers anyway, so I had a couple of pale ales on Saturday watching TV. Then other than a mince pie & some baileys whipped cream stayed away from the treats so feel better about myself on the food side of things already.

My under 13 boys GAA team is back training from tomorrow also, so there's 2 more opportunities a week to be out & active as well.

I have had a stressful week with personal and work stuff. usually I would comfort eat but luckily just didnt feel like it. I have had the usual big loss week 1, but know from experience that a lot of it is water weight and I will bounce back up a bit.

Week 0: 96.2kg (212lbs)

Week 1: 93.9kg (-2.3kg / 5lbs)

That's great to be so consistent! My health kick a few years ago (logged on here) was saying goodbye to my 30's also.

My bounce back was immeadite, I had done a run the day before my week 1 weigh in (93.9) as I am 94.3kg this am.

What's the difference between your daily weigh in and a 'proper weigh in'? I'm now picturing the below

Daily weigh ins are not a bad thing but something to be cautious with. It helps to do the weigh ins at exactly the same time every day (like directly after a morning poo). But even then remember that many things can cause variance.

Some foods move through you slower than others for example. So on Monday your gut might be relatively empty and you seem to have lost weight - but on Tuesday the opposite so you think you have gained. In fact you can measure your "gut motility" and see if it's in the norms. There are recipes online for this where it will turn your poo blue. So you eat the recipe and then see how long it takes to come out blue.

The same is true with water retention. Your body can gain or lose water differently each day. So daily weight will always yo yo to some degree because you are more water heavy today than the day before.

Too much data is never a bad thing. So measure daily if you like. But do not put too much negative - or even positive - emotion into any drop or rise day to day. It's the change over longer periods of time you should look at.

Also remember you can lose fat but gain muscle. So you can weigh the same today as you do in 6 months but look a hell of a lot leaner and better. But the weighing scales will not see anything different. Keeping a measurement of other things like your resting heart rate, the circumference of your thighs, and belly around the belly button, can also be useful. You might weight the same in 6 months as you do today, but all those other statistics will go down.

^ My sister got very emotive about the day to day weigh ins too. Putting too much positive or negative feeling into a daily rise or fall. In the end what she did was to stand on the scale and have someone else (her daughter) note the result in a spread sheet. So she did not know the changes day to day. But EXCEL would give her a graph over time which she would look at once a month.

And her monthly trend was down - so she now had a monthly positive with none of the daily negative emotional hits on the "bad" days. She had a graph over time that was showing she was on the right path for her.

Ditto, ate like a horse and though not the weigh in day I am way up.

I am mostly maintaining my ideal weight these days. But to get there I did pass through a few plateaus for sure. It was a bit of a slog over the years.

Generally I got over the plateaus by combining 1 or more techniques. Which worked for me but that of course never means it will work for someone else.

The first was to design a few low calorie, good fiber, high nutrient smoothies.

The second was to only eat when I actually wanted to eat. Not when the "normal" timetable made me do it. Tradition has us eating breakfast, lunch, dinner and sometimes a supper. We do it because the time of day tells us we should. But I switched to skipping those meals when the time came unless I actually felt I wanted it.

The third was time fasting. So I would eat only between 12midday and 8pm.

A fourth was to have a boiled egg and a water about 45 minutes before the biggest meal of the day. Which sometimes meant I did not even want that meal. But it usually meant I did not eat nearly as much as I normally would because eggs and water are appetite suppressants.

And the fifth was isolation diets where I would entirely cut out some food groups. Normally (but not always) this would be the carnivore diet for me so I Would basically only have meat or eggs for the most part. Usually one piece of fresh fruit and one Fiber thing (mostly carrot or celery sticks with a bit of cream cheese) for a few weeks.

Generally those things helped me push through any plateau. And I still do some or all of them at different times now to help maintain. On a bit of a carnivore and smoothie kick this January. Nice Steak with runny fried (actually air fried) eggs on top for breakfast today. I will have a ChatGPT designed smoothie for a late lunch. And Dinner I might take it or leave it but will probably be a basket of air fried prawns with garlic butter and spring onions today. A few celery sticks already lying around for when I get peckish. Last night I had crispy roast duck and spring onions and cucumber sticks in lettuce leaf wraps with a touch of hoisin. Tomorrow I think I am likely to decimate a scary quantity of homemade ribs. Been craving more ribs ever since a recent trip to Bavaria where I had an enormous rack of horse ribs.

It really is a lifelong thing. For me the maintenance is the hardest thing, I’ve lost weight so many times and then let it creep back up. I’ve a milestone birthday in a couple of months and ideally I’d like to lose about 8kg or so by then.

tax this is probably random but did you do a money diary for the journal before? Your diet is v.similar to one I read recently.

I'm going to slimming world tomorrow. I haven't been in about 7 years but I'm undoubtedly at my heaviest. I'm around 12 stone and I'm aiming to get to 11 and then hopefully once I get there I'll reassess and go for a bit more. I'd previously gotten down to just under 9 stone and I looked great but I was in my early 20's and I don't see that being realistic in my 30's.

I think a lot of peoples concerns about any of the slimming groups are valid but I'm unhappy in my skin and I know if I stick to it it'll work. I don't have the discipline to stick to a plan on my own so the accountability will keep me in line.

Yoyo week due to very long hours in work and other factors. Trying to get to the gym each weekday morning for 30 mins weights, which Im keeping too.

Cant run as my knee is banjoed so its the good old, cant out train a bad diet.

Week 0: 96.2kg (212lbs)

Week 1: 93.9kg (-2.3kg / 5lbs)

Week 2: 94.2kg (+0.3kg/0.66kg)